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The BBC’s Cuba “Expert” frantically revises some of his “Expertise.”

It has been an exciting week. I was the subject of a "special police" operation upon leaving the bar of the Hotel St. John in the Vedado neighborhood. My "crime" was having a cup of coffee and talking to a journalism student, whom I was helping with his graduate thesis.

At the bar, I had noticed that the waiter kept walking by our table excessively, but I thought he was simply bored due to lack of clients. However, at one point I saw him whispering to the receptionist as they glared at us from the corner of their eyes.

The fact is that upon leaving, we were confronted by two agents of the "special police" (they wouldn't tell me what they "specialized" in). With an angry look, they asked us for our documents and refused to tell us why they were taking such measure..........The funny thing is that one of the questions the student had previously asked me was whether foreign journalists had difficulties in approaching Cubans, to which I answered "no." I never thought I'd be contradicted so quickly.

I was talking to a french tourist who while staying in a Havana Hotel invited her recently acquaintance over to her room for a nightcap, the special police came and yanked him out by his ears while apologizing to her and explaining that they did not want her to get a bad impression of Cuba! Needless to say she does not ever plan on going back! Oh! Cuba "Unico Pais libre en America" yeah right!

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